One type of modular computing devices includes a cooling plate coupled to a circuit board of the modular computing device, where the cooling plate spans the area of the circuit board to provide thermal regulations of components populated on one side of the circuit board. Conduction cooled computing devices provide a compact and/or rugged configuration for use in a wide number of computing and control applications, particularly in industrial, telecommunication, aerospace, and military systems. An example of a conduction cooled standard is the COM Express module, which is defined in the COM Express Module Base Specification and the VITA 59 standard.
Because of their compact and/or rugged form, conduction cooled computing components often have a higher thermal density and pose a challenge to system designers using such devices. For example, such devices may have components on both sides of a circuit board and mounts to a base board such as a carrier card. This arrangement makes cooling of components between the circuit board and the base board difficult.
In one installed configuration of a conduction-cooled module (e.g., conduction-cooled COM Express module), the cooling plate and circuit board are coupled to one another, as a system, and are then coupled to a carrier card. In such configuration, integrated circuits and other heat-generating components of the module, located in a closed area defined between the module and the carrier card, are indirectly cooled whereby heat generated from such components have to radiate through the circuit board of the module to the opposite side of the module where the cooling plate is located. This lack of direct cooling results in the integrated circuits in the closed area having a higher operating temperature as compared to other components of the module. Moreover, lack of direct heat removal from the closed area between the module and the carrier card limits this area of the module to placements of additional, or higher density, computing components.
Though active thermal regulation systems are available, passive conduction and convection thermal regulation systems are often preferred for their simplicity and robustness in many applications. And, as the requirements for processing density, functionality, and compactness of computing systems have increased over time for embedded control systems, greater heat dissipation capability is desired.
Therefore, what are needed are devices, systems and methods that overcome challenges in the present art, some of which are described above.